Thread: Mapping your dream world

I usually don't dream of the same place twice, so I don't think it would do much for me. But I'd say go for it! It would be really cool to look at maps of someone's dream world.

Also, I think I remember Matte doing something interesting that is similar, let me see if I can find it... this. It might be of interest to you, not exactly the same concept but it may be of use.

Very interesting topic. Locations in dreams tend to completely differ (like distant places are right next to each other), but assuming they have a mental organization, mapping would be quite cool!

Has any of the experienced lucid dreamers tried this project ?

Just had a dream today, I took a bus trying to go back home but instead ended up far away, in a dream place, a building block where I remembered I went to a party some dream days ago. I have noticed that I dream some unknown places more than once, but it happens over a long period of time, also there's the problem of forgetting. If I go to a dreamplace 1, and then forget, and then dream it again and forget again...see what I mean. But, yeah, I guess you could actually get really involved in this, and you can certainly gather a nice collection of places (from possibly a whole lot of places you have been to). Better than having no collection at all. I imagine if you could actually draw these different places or mind map them, imagining them as bubbles full of stable detail, that would be really cool.

Odd...I posted a thread exactly like this a couple years back...great minds think alike, I suppose
http://www.dreamviews.com/general-dr...eam-world.html

I agree that this is interesting, since I often find myself in similar areas or certain buildings (hotels, malls, trains or train stations). But I hadn't thought of keeping a list of them or mapping it out before, I think this could be really useful for me! Granted I'm bad at drawing, but I could write down as much as I can and start a list of places.

yea im most definitely dont make a good lookin sketch, i was thinking of writing them down in the best detail possible and it would keep you aware of your triggers and you could use it as the butterfly effect kinda where you read about your place or scene and then go into that dream right from there with a WILD. i just gotta start putting this into effect

Yes. Link below is an old map I finished.

http://i166.photobucket.com/albums/u...aphy2001-1.jpg

Dream cartography has opened my eyes. I do not map anymore, but I will dream of places that I haven't dreamed of in years, and thanks to my 4 year old dream journal, I realize that these places are exactly similar - despite having never been there. These made up cities can also have connections to other cities that I have dreamed of before, recurrently.

Sometimes, it really gives me the creeps.

Once you start making these connections, it becomes very thought provoking.

Queen zukin, thanks for sharing the map. It's really cool. I don't have that much dream place detail yet to draw a map like that, so like I said, if I were to ever draw it, I would probably put places in some kind of floating bubbles. Inspired by this discussion, I have been thinking of drawing some elements of my dreams for two reasons, to increase my visualization skills and just create something like dream photography. I wonder if it would be possible to use LD to enhance my drawing skills and then use drawings to create vivid images of my dreams. It is definitely worth a try, and hopefully this idea won't end in my throw away to-do-list, which is getting longer by the minute.

Oh, and by the way, have you guys considered that you might be dreaming of some unknown to you places that are really here somewhere, but you just have never been there irl? Maybe the house you visited last night is somewhere in a town in some country. I just had this happen to me only once, I dreamt a particular street, gray steps, a screen. Some years afterwards I actually went to the place irl, it was in Singapore! Nothing special happened there, just noticed it was the same place from the dream. You can use google earth these days to tour around cities, so it might just be that you happen to find a place that you have been to. Who knows?

that dream map is exactly what i had in mind . It makes me think of Pangaea the way there is something from every climate. And NyxCC i like your realization its just like people having dreams about certain people they have never met before and then meeting them sometime after. aahh this makes you so siked about this

I did have a small list somewhere of dream locations I want to go back to, but this makes me really want to go and find more that I have never been to. I always wanted to do dream cartography, but I was never really sure how to do it. It would be cool to go back to some of them and find out what really happens there if, for example, you had to leave suddenly or something. Maybe like places from nightmares? it would probably help with dream control too, because if you became lucid and knew where you were, you would be able to know where to go to find places and do things.

It would be good if someone actually did a really detailed tutorial on dream cartography though, because I can't find much on the internet either.

I have been intending to make a dream map for ages, as I also have a somewhat consistent dream world. Queen Zukin, your map is really gorgeous! That inspires me to get a start on my own.

Reading about dream cartography always reminds me of the Russian DreamHackers. They had some pretty good ideas on the subject. Sadly, I cannot find the particular set of instructions that I'm looking for.

Edit: Found it! Put in spoiler tags below.

Spoiler for Dream Mapping:

-There are not multiple cities in dreams, there is only one city, an amalgam of every city your are familiar with.\

- The center of the dream map is your house you grew up in, which is an amalgam of every house you've ever lived in. (Strange house, anyone?)

-There are Northern, Southern, Eastern and Western borders in your dream realm. The north and south ones are immutable, but the north one can be pushed back further with practice.


It seems to hold true from my experience, yet I'm unable to tell if that's the case for everyone from reading DJs. So what does everyone else think of this?

Here's some of the translated text (There's something lost in the translation, but generally gets the point across):

"1) The Dreamworld (or rather the model which described it) appeared
to be a rather small area. For instance, there was only one city
there. I have lived in many countries. In Russia, I haven't only
been in the far north and in the far east. Nevertheless, there is only one
city on the map: the embodiment of all the cities I have ever seen,
with elements of St.Petersburg, Minsk, of Kasbah [Where is Kasbah?]
and Tashkent. Transitions and interflows of these places in-Dreaming
are amazingly harmonic and natural. Furthermore there are a lot
of "cul-de-sac bubbles" (dreams) round the City-summer camps,
friends' houses, directions in the area to places of which I had
heard, but hadn't visited yet.

2) The centre of the Dreamworld is the house of the Dreamer. The
edges of the map are called "border ranges" (usually mountain
chains, seas, rivers, dunes, and deserts). There is nowhere farther than
these "border ranges". In this very moment "Hackers"
know only that northern and southern "border ranges" are immutable. With the
practice the northern "border range" moves slightly further
afield.
There are some "blind spots" on the eastern "border range" (a highly- restricted area!).

3) There are dozen of places on the Dream map which don't exist
in the "real" world. For instance, the zone of cataclysms, labyrinths
etc. [Caves?] which I have already mentioned.

4) And last but not least: we nearly went crazy when we found out
that our maps had common basic details. Some special places are
present on nearly every map. For example, K. writes about a huge
building, which has a link with a stadium. And I have this formation
too. And, as I know where this place is situated, I can give K. some
useful advice and in this way I can help her create a map. And, in
the case of telling K. about the nearest landmarks, she may have had
a very interesting insight-she came to know that she had already
visited those landmarks thousands of times, and consequently she was
caught up by a wonderful and inexpressible feeling of dream
recollection. Another "invention" is connected to two buildings-a
sanctuary and a jail (the sanctuary could be in the form of
"police"
or a "computer"; the "jail" could be smart, evil, and
destructive: a
concentration camp with a bigot-executioner; an army college etc.).
You will find a lot in the first place. As for the second place, you
will have already visited it many times, and loosen up a lot.[What
does this mean?] Then "hackers" found out that if they got
their
practice right (by searching for necessary places and avoiding
unnecessary places) a Dreamer becomes involved in a shocking process.
Each new recollection and description of a dream will rope you into a
chain of very old recollections (ten or twenty years old)! Hundreds
of places, where you have been hundreds of times will be revealed in
a bright flash! In such moments a man lives through a very powerful
state. ["It is like a 'weekly Satori' "] You will not feel euphoria,
but rather a strange thirst-faster! More! The everyday "reality"
of
your family, friends, your job, the "real" world will leave you. You
are neither here nor there-on a strange borderline. Dreams become
very transparent. You remember yourself in a Dream every night.
Achievements turn out to be heady. The words of Castaneda and don
Juan gain a new meaning. You see something in them that you
didn't
manage to catch before. BAH! Subsequent collapse into an insufferable
depression-you want to commit suicide. And yet again you have to gather up your strength bit-by-
bit and continue your practice until new ups-and-downs come, breaking
certain membranes in yourself. And later you take your map, knead it
like a piece of dough, and use it purposefully. Then you don't
need
it any more. By this time, as a rule, there is no "fog of
war" on it.
Some time later you turn your attention to those strange "blind
spots" on the "border range" of the Tonal. But, as the
saying goes,
that's another story."

I can't actually map it, but i can say where i do go.

I think that pattern does occur in probably everyone's dreams and they just don't recall it or know their dreaming.. I mean that's how ik I was dreaming one time but it was a nightmare and I never even heard of lucid dreaming. Looking back at it , it was real fun im going to get into LDing again starting now on I might try to map the details of all of my surroundings in my dreams.

This has always been an interest of mine, but I feel that my dreams are too hyperspatial to draw a 2-D map of any kind.. I have noticed that dreamzones integrate in exceedingly curious ways. Maybe dream characters could be used for directions! I say this because in one of my own dreams my brother gave me alternative directions to a jungle I had stepped into through a door under a bed: "I pass through and find myself in an incredible jungle. I stand on a narrow ledge with a path that runs alongside a wall that reaches to the canopy high above. Below the ledge the wall continued into deep, deep jungle. Massive trees hundreds of feet tall, vines, ferns, bushes, flowers and other god-world-sized rain forest foliage face me silently. The path on the ledge appeals to my explorer's intuition and curiosity, but I am so excited that I've found a portal to the jungle I immediately return to the bedroom and squeeze out from under the bed, just barely sliding my head out from between the floor and the bedframe as I grow back to normal size. My brother and a friend enter. I tell him about the jungle and my brother casually responds by saying something like 'oh yeah there's another way to get there through <some city> but you have to go a ways away through an old valley..." When he gave me the directions I had a bit of a flash through the places he described. Sadly, I don't remember exactly what he said but that the city began with a P. I could probably find my way there again in my dreams, but haven't since. The dream happened on Feb. 21st. Anyway, I think it's very possible to map your dream world if you can find out how the places are connected (through a doorway under the bed in my brother's bedroom/through a city then an old valley) To me it makes perfect sense to use directions to find a place in a dream as it will provide solid expectation and the intent necessary to get there. But as for a map I would try to make a web with pictures and descriptions of how the places are linked in the form of directions. An interesting post somewhat related here

I read about this in a book -- actually heard about it in an audio book ---- probably lucid dreaming plain & simple --- but possibly a field guide to lucid dreaming ---

A lot of people drew maps of their dreams & when later compared there were a lot of similarities between a lot of them --- for example the industrial section was located in the southeast portion of the map

This is a very interesting topic. I've always maintained that dream settings seem to come in two major varieties. There are settings that are a location from waking life with varying amounts of dream alteration. They can be fairly normal, almost completely accurate representations of waking life locations, or they can be overlaid with other themes. For instance, I once dreamed that I was living on mars and the space habitat was in the exact size and layout of my house, but everything looked space-ified. Outside the lawn was replaced with red rocks and dust and the neighborhood was a collection of habitats.

The others are completely original locations. These seem a lot less likely to reoccur with any amount of accuracy. I could make the example of last night's dream taking place in a sub-tropical beach town in a large fjord. There was inspiration from a few places that I have been or seen but ultimately the environment was original. In my written DJ I often use the term OTD (Original To Dream) to describe such an environment. I can use the same term to describe a dream character that is not someone from WL.

I have had OTD environments re-occur but they are very inconsistent. So much so that they only often share a few defining characteristics and the knowledge that I am in that environment.

My dream character Marcus owns a house that some dreams take place in. His house is generally shown to be very large with a spacious living room area that is two stories high with an interior balcony running around part of it that has appeared at least four times as far as I can remember. But outside of that, the features of his house have been really inconsistent.

Another feature of dreams, particularly lucid ones is the saturn planet and double suns. I talk a lot about my 'alien skies' dream sign and spotting planets and multiple suns in the sky. But one sky is particularly common; the one in where there is a large ringed planet in the sky and two suns. This has led me to infer that my recurring dream planet is the moon of this ringed gas giant that orbits circumbinary around twin suns. I've also had two opportunities to fly into space and observe this system from far away; and both times the planet was the third of five major moons around that planet. So I could at the very least infer that is an infant dream realm arranging itself from the largest scale down. I of course have no data on what the planet is like and how it is mapped other than it seems warmer than earth; with only temperate climates at the poles and tropical climates along the equator. (It had no ice caps and landing at the north pole put me in a city with a temperate forest around it.)

I wish I had a more detailed map of specific locations to visit rather than a general outline of how it's arranged on a cosmic scale, though that does open up the possibility of an interplanetary dream realm. Perhaps exploration of the other four moons is warranted.

Fascinating! It makes me think of all those (non-lucid) dreams where I consult maps during the dream itself in order to get somewhere. I’ve always sort of wondered how weird that is. Unfortunately, I hardly ever made sketches when I journaled, and so practically all of them are long-gone. But if I were to try to make a big map of the locations I’ve dreamed, it would have to be mostly water, with various islands, archipelagos and coastal cities around the edges – not at all like anything described on this thread. And I can’t say anything at all about the astronomy, other than that I’ve sometimes seen maps spread across the night sky, too.

Hello, colleagues.
This topic is very interesting and I hope Your interes is still here, isn't it?
Let's discuss Dream Mapping, if You want to.

--

Hi EnaNaves! Please do this in a new thread rather than reviving an old thread. Thank you so much!

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